So I was trying to rationalize trying to install a factor six railgun spinal mount, for two primary missions, expendable line of battle ship and ground bombardment. Primary competitors were a factor six particle accelerator and a factor three, possibly four, meson gun.

Of course, the first consideration was if you could tweak spinal mounts using primitive and advanced options, because again, it's pretty much dependent on bang for buck, and that however the battle goes, these warships are going to be badly banged up in a relatively short time, meaning at best an expensive repair bill, or even scrapped.

That's one reason the railgun appealed to me, it was, or seemed, cheaper to build and operate than any of it's contenders. amd maxed out at technological level thirteen, allowing a lower specced weapons plant to build them.

Then it became time trying to assemble a weapons platform around it, which would need to be at least hundred kilotonnes to take advantage of the increased hit points. At which point, comparing the cost of the required components necessary to make it a viable fighting ship shook my faith in the concept, and concluded you might as well just stick with the meson gun, considering the other sunk costs.

Bombardment vessels are a support role not a fighting ship like a battleship and given that its the ground effects of the AOE that matters a railgun is a good fit for it. For a ship version of this you'd only need about 30Kdt - 50Kdt to be effective and if you want an orbital overwatch platform use a buffered planetoid with a metal rich content so it can manufacture more ammunition.

The 1DD shot also gets the blast trait versus ground targets. (1,000 if scaling is based on destructive trait multiplier of spinals.) So, a low DD railgun would be a good way to provide a orbital bombardment weapon.

If you scale downwards, you have a large bay that with the same ball bearing that is less effective, and requires being a lot more closer to the target.

Speaking of which, one reason to favour weapon tweaks instead of straight forward shrinkage, is that you want that extra distance between you and the target; if the planet is safe enough to bombard at medium and short ranges, you can accomplish your objectives with a lot smaller weapon systems. Arguably, you could make that same argument for the particle accelerator, even at half damage.

Bill details the engineering choices underlying the design of a beverage can He explains why it is cylindrical, outlines the manufacturing steps needed to created the can, notes why the can narrows near it lid, show close ups of the double-seam that hold the lid on, and details the complex operation of the tab that opens the can.

If you scale downwards, you have a large bay that with the same ball bearing that is less effective, and requires being a lot more closer to the target.

Speaking of which, one reason to favour weapon tweaks instead of straight forward shrinkage, is that you want that extra distance between you and the target; if the planet is safe enough to bombard at medium and short ranges, you can accomplish your objectives with a lot smaller weapon systems. Arguably, you could make that same argument for the particle accelerator, even at half damage.

Could be more of a psychological effect.

The railgun spinal by virtue of being a spinal weapon does far more damage over a greater area then any of the bay weapons. ( Mass Driver bays are more useful than the railgun bays in this task.)

Space is a hostile place, in this episode we will look at what you need to survive in it, dispels some myths about it, and get into the specifics of how much air, water, power, and other things you need and how to get them.

1. Never give up, never surrender.

2. Chicken soup.

3. Talking allowed.

4. Eight watts of power for carbon dioxide scrubbing, per person.

5. Thousand joules per litre of water treated.

6. Hundred litres one watt?

7. Hamster wheels at two rotations per minute, two hundred and twenty four metres radius, fourteen hundred metres circumference.

Fixed mounts still require hard points and at least as written in mgt 2ed don't get the benefit of double / triple mounts.

So you'd end up with a beam laser, 2 x sandcasters and 10x laser drills with the drills having a -3 DM / adjacent range with sandcasters that can only be employed in the front arc. ( Arcs are important for fixed mounts through a buried rule note.)

However, some spacecraft, particularly small craft
such as fighters, have fixed weapon mounts and must
actually point towards the target they are engaging. In
this instance, it is important to keep track of where a
spacecraft is pointing.

Condottiere wrote: ↑
In theory, zero tonnage, just a tad under ten million bucks, one hundred nine energy points and if fired in unison, how much potential damage?

The intent of the rules, as explained by Nerhesi during beta, is that each mount (hardpoint/firmpoint) is grouped, so 36 laser drills mounted on 12 fixed mounts on 12 hardpoints are grouped into 12 batteries of 4D+8 damage.

Specific to laser drills, and in this case extended range variants, this should be a sustained duration weapon, which means anyone unlucky enough to fly in front of it during that specific round is going to get fried.

The beam laser would mark the exact centre of the blast area.

You can scale it.

You only need one gunner, and it easily could be the pilot, or pass it to a targetting programme that beeps when the nose lines up with the target.

It's not an efficient use of hardpoints as a bay weapon system, but tonnage is free, though if you made each one one eighth of a tonne, it would be nine and three eighths.

The range only goes up to close from adjacent and your still constrained by the hardpoints which are required for any type of weapon mount. Further, as mentioned before fixed mounts RAW don't allow more than a single weapon to be mounted so your reducing the higher weapon density, range and accuracy for a very limited arc weapon.

Vehicles 2ed states the minimum size for a spaceship weapon is 1 space or 0.25t, which lines up with a large turret having the capacity for three spaceship weapons + crew. Honestly, fixed mounts should take up displacement and turrets should add an additional displacement. ( 2t would be a good point and quad should have a further +1t)